Typically, packages shipped by shipping carriers (e.g., United Parcel Service, Inc.; FedEx Corp.; or the United States Postal Service) are routed from their origin to their destination through a variety of shipping hubs located at various points along a planned route. Many of these hubs are regional warehouses used by shipping carriers as intermediary points where packages en route are sorted and loaded onto a shipping vehicle for transport to the next hub. As the packages inbound to each hub may be shipped by many different customers and bound for many different destinations, this sorting process is usually necessary to ensure inbound packages are correctly routed to their destination.
Although the sorting process allows shipping carriers to efficiently route the shipments of their many customers, sorting a package at every hub through which it travels has a number of drawbacks. First, each time a package is sorted at a hub, the shipment of the package is delayed by the amount of time it takes to receive, process, sort, and load the package onto the next shipping vehicle. Second, in light of the costs and resources needed to provide sorting services at each hub, customers are typically charged increasing shipping rates proportional to the number of hubs their packages flow through.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system that allows shipping carriers to optimize their shipping practices by identifying shipping routes along which a customer may by-pass the sorting process of regional shipping hubs.